In this podcast, I visit with Vin DiCianni, founder of Affiliated Monitors, Inc. In it, we explore corporation culture and its relationship to ethics and compliance. We began with senior leadership. A company does not have an ethical culture unless the top management commits to it going forward. Employees not only listen to what they say but they watch how they act. Employees look for signals about what really counts in an organization. But you must then move down to implementation of this goal. Employees want to know if senior See more +

In this podcast, I visit with Vin DiCianni, founder of Affiliated Monitors, Inc. In it, we explore corporation culture and its relationship to ethics and compliance. We began with senior leadership. A company does not have an ethical culture unless the top management commits to it going forward. Employees not only listen to what they say but they watch how they act. Employees look for signals about what really counts in an organization. But you must then move down to implementation of this goal. Employees want to know if senior leadership is committed to the company’s core values. But equally important is a sense of organizational justice and fairness. Employees want to not only see they will be treated fairly but there is not a delineation of favorites and non-favorites in an organization. DiCianni emphasized that it is the senior leadership who really drives the alignment between incentives and performance.

The key is that there be an alignment between what top management says, coupled with the company’s core values and what the organization says together with what they do. This all comes from senior management getting out of their office and talking to employees in the field to see not only what they think but how they feel. No company aspires to be unethical and most assuredly employees do not want to engage in unethical behavior but if senior management does not talk to employees they will not know how their messages are being received. It does not take long when there is a disconnect between what senior management says and what the employees take away. It is a bit disconcerting how little top management really understand their employees. Because of this, senior leaders do not know what messages they are receiving, both verbal and non-verbal. See less -